Savannah's crime spike mirrored across the country

Those are just some of the problems Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police officers face daily.

They're not alone.

Police officers across the nation are encountering similar spikes in violent crime. That's what interim Chief Willie Lovett and Mayor Otis Johnson learned last week when they attended the National Summit on Violent Crime in Washington, D.C.

"The reinforcing thing, in a negative way, is we are not alone in Savannah in this upsurge in juvenile crime," Johnson said. "It's a national epidemic."

The mayor, the interim police chief and City Manager Michael Brown met with about 120 officials from 45 cities across the nation. Many said the same thing: violent crime is up and ages of criminals are down.

"There was not one city that was unique," Lovett said. "Every city ... there has really experienced a big increase in violent crime, first robberies and second in homicides."

In the first six months of this year, robberies increased 19 percent in Savannah over the same period in 2005. Homicides are down 26 percent, according to police statistics.

"We see this as the front end of an epidemic, if you will, of violence that seems to be gripping many parts of the country," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, the group leading the search for a new SCMPD chief. "The good news is that we're much more sensitive to picking up on these trends quicker." Wexler's group also sponsored the Washington forum.

Lovett sought ways to combat spikes in armed robberies and the rising tide of youth crime, including a growing gang population locally.

"Unfortunately, we had all the same scenarios, but not as many solutions," he said. "Everybody had their own personal spin, but there was nothing new."

The interim chief was comforted that most agencies are deploying the same tactics as SCMPD - beefed-up patrols and special operations.

The one program that did interest the interim chief was a truancy initiative that combines city police with campus officers and school counselors to track AWOL students. The team makes daily visits to student homes, monitors where they congregate and issues court summons to parents of children who miss more than three un-excused days of school, Lovett said.

"If they are young and out of school, they're going to find something to do," Lovett said. "With high truancy rates come high property crime rates."

Lovett hopes to meet with Savannah-Chatham Public School officials to talk about implementing the program. Campus Police Chief Ulysses O. Bryant Jr. did not return a phone message seeking comment. Tamika Bond-Burnett, media liaison for the school district, advised a reporter to attend Wednesday's school board meeting to get a comment on the program.

Last year, the school district implemented a plan that called for meetings between school officials and parents after five un-excused absences in a month. If those meetings weren't successful, the student and parents could be prosecuted.

As a practical matter, however, a lack of communication between police and school officials has meant prosecution has not been pursued.

A revised tracking program would increase that communication, Lovett said.

The chiefs also called for more federal dollars for local crime initiatives, something that used to happen more before Sept. 11, 2001. After the attacks, federal funds were diverted to homeland security programs.

Last year, Congress slashed $127.7 million from the community policing budget, and $217.5 million from the U.S. Department of Justice grant program, according to the Police Executive Research Forum.

Savannah officials plan to work with organizations such as the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors to solicit more national dollars for local anti-crime programs, Johnson said.

"All these dollars are going to foreign countries to rebuild when, in essence, we have a war going on right here in our own country that needs to be fought," Lovett said.

Johnson declined to discuss the programs that interested him, saying he wanted to wait until the city hires a new police chief.